Midway through their set, one of Los Campesinos!’s (not sure to punctuate that) keyboards died. It didn’t break; it ran out of batteries. The batteries they had been using were given them at a previous show by a fan who took them out of his camera so that the show could go on. Gareth, Los Campesinos!’s frontman, apologized to the crowd: “We were going to play a popular song, I guess we can’t play it now.” He then quipped, “Here’s where you go home and write on your blog one of two things- either we were sloppy and unprofessional, or, you got to sit in on a band practice!” A few songs later, batteries procured, the band ripped through the previously skipped “We are Beautiful, We are Doomed.”

We will be having a General Interest Meeting for prospective DJs this Sunday at 7pm in Pearson Hall 104. The meeting will last less than an hour. We will be covering all of the basic information for training and being a DJ and staff member at WMFO. For more information email training@wmfo.org

The Internet is an offshoot of the OFWGKTA family and I don’t really have much to say about that except that Syd tha Kid is a great producer and the Internet has a great sound.

A lot of people hate Odd Future because a lot of the time it’s hard to accept hate speech as ironic, and I include myself in that group. Luckily, “Cocaine” gets across OFWGKTA’s trademark nihilism without really doing anything provocative, except for having a freaking weird music video. I see “Cocaine” as a sort of response to Enrique Iglesias’s “Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You),” in that it takes the ironically blunt come-on to a frightening level, and the video drains the song of any glimmer of hope.

This week we’re obsessed with beginnings- what marks the start of something special? How do we get away from what we once were? Take a look at some of our writers’ takes on what bands started with a bang. (more…)

This week we have women who defined the bands they were in. This isn’t your 1960s girl-group best-of. These are the women whose performances got people to sit down and shut up, who led groups that changed the way that we listen to music.

Or why we can’t have nice things, or why it’s impossible impossible to talk about why you like something.

A dialogue in one obnoxious voice.

If you’ll allow me to wax post-modern in this post, I think we can really uncover a lot about Drake as an artist by examining the month-old video for “Headlines”, which is really just a way for me to freak out about how soon his new album Take Care comes out (Nov 15).

In honor of the movie Drive, which has an awesome sound track and is good to watch also, the blogging staff have compiled a brief list of our favorite songs in movies. These are songs that come in, sometimes out of nowhere, to elevate a great scene in a film to truly memorable status.

Catherine-

Bill Withers — “Ain’t No Sunshine” in Notting Hill

I love this clip from Notting Hill. Instead of flashing “one year later” on the screen, we see Will walking through the familiar route from home to his travel bookshop through the marketplace and the seasons. The melancholy of Bill Withers “Ain’t No Sunshine” perfectly fits the mood. In the course of the walk, his friend finds and loses a boyfriend and a woman has a baby. The whole time, he’s lost in his thoughts about his brief relationship with actress Anna Scott which, incidentally, crumbled at the hands of his idiot roommate Spike, the best character in the film, played by Rhys Ifans. He doesn’t feel like he has the right to contact her and she’s just gone. It’s also literally fitting with the seasons of fall and winter book ended by the sunshine and Anna’s visits to Notting Hill. The scene almost makes you forget Elvis Costello belting out “She” at the film’s opening to the montage of Julia Roberts clips on red carpets and in films. Why Elvis, why?

The video shows the ending of a movie that I was so engrossed in at the time such that the departure of the two characters from each other, as well as from Tokyo, was doubly effective. “Lost in Translation” was an excellent movie that one had to soak up and be patient with, so this ending song was a powerful closer for me after living through the characters and the scenery for a few hours. The fuzzed out Jesus and Mary Chain track was perfect and made me seek out the group’s “Psychocandy” album as well as albums by My Bloody Valentine.

Ellen-

Pixies- “Where is My Mind?” in Fight Club

Elen didn’t tell me why she liked it so much, but I guess this one sort of goes without saying.

Garrett-

The Stooges- “Search and Destroy” in The Life Aquatic

Wes Anderson is in many ways the king of using pop music to comment on scenes in his films. But this scene from The Life Aquatic takes the cake as the most over-the-top musical insertion in any of his films. Even in the context of The Life Aquatic’s constant allusions to David Bowie, which is itself an integral component in the film’s absurdity, the pirate shoot-out scene with “Search and Destroy” blaring in the background manages to transcend the ironic distance between the camera and Steve Zissou. As Iggy Pop growls “Look out honey ’cause I’m using technology” we see Bill Murray firing away for minutes from a gun that never needs reloading. The scene’s final moment where Murray throws the suddenly empty gun into the ocean is the perfect punctuation to my choice for the best song in a movie.

Hillevi

Too many to pick!

When I sat down to think about excellent songs or soundtracks in movies, I immediately thought of a few of my favorites. The Hans Zimmer theme song from Tarantino’s True Romance is catchier than this season’s flu. Gillian Welch, Allison Krauss, and Emmylou Harris lending their talents to the Siren’s song in O Brother, Where Art Thou are the icing on the cake to a movie full of amazing bluegrass tunes and period folk Americana. I love how the soundtrack works in the movie Lost In Translation. It includes a song by Phoenix, The Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Just Like Honey’, as well as excellent karaoke by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. And what better a way to open Billy Elliot than with this appropriate T. Rex song?

At the end of the day, after considering an amazing diversity of songs made for movies, songs that work well in movies, and even some musicals, I have to submit Empire Records for my pick. From the opening of the shop when Mark gets to pick the tune because he has the chosen m&m color, to Joe’s cathartic drum session of ACDC, to the ending roof top concert and dance. It all rocks.

Craft Spells make wonderfully dour guitar-pop that’s half Joy Division, half Smiths. Their debut album Idle Laborcame out in April, and they’ve got a new video out for one of its best tracks, “Your Tomb”. In the video, Crafts Spells’ front man/creative workhorse Justin Vallesteros is roped into a surveillance mission targeting a subtly terrifying young woman having a birthday party for herself. The video gleefully plays with your typical music video conventions, a femme fatale, a dead-pan lead, blood splattering over a birthday cake, and an un-explainable transition from narrative to full-band performance that ends in triple homicide. And it’s a great pop song!